


In Good Conscience

by Byrcca



Series: Nothing Human [2]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Episode: s05ep08 Nothing Human, F-Bomb, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 20:15:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16772128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byrcca/pseuds/Byrcca
Summary: A week after the events of Nothing Human Tom and B’Elanna haven’t quite reconciled yet.





	In Good Conscience

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking about, canonically, how Tom and B’Elanna make up after a fight. Usually, it’s off screen. But on screen, they either pretend the disagreement never happened (Displaced) or really hash it out (Legacy). This story has a bit of both.

_There is a crack, a crack in everything_  
_That's how the light gets in_

~ Anthem, Leonard Cohen

********

_“How could you allow it?”_

_“Janeway wouldn’t—”_

_“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare put this on her! You were right there. You knew how I felt and you let it happen anyway!”_

_”You didn’t see yourself stretched out on that bed with that… that thing on top of you, its tendrils wound through your internal organs. You were dying.”_

_”You knew I’d accepted that risk. You knew I didn’t want him to treat me!”_

_“It was—”_

_“I may wear the uniform but I’m still a Maquis! I still believe in the resistance.”_

_“The resistance is over!”_

***

Tom jolted awake with a gasp, his body jerking, pain shooting down his neck and along his spine. He clutched at his shoulder muscle and grimaced, glanced warily around his quarters. He’d fallen asleep on the couch, his head resting on the seatback, his throat exposed. 

_Her eyes sparkling, her voice teasing, “Don’t you know to never expose your throat to a Klingon, Tom?”_

He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and breathed, saw stars then nebulas swirl behind his eyelids, tried to get his pounding heart under control. He’d been dreaming, reliving the argument he’d had with B’Elanna after the hologram of Crell Moset had saved her life. The argument where she’d accused him of not caring enough about her to abide by her wishes. 

_“I’m not just your fuck-toy, Tom! Either you respect me or you don’t.”_

He’d drawn back as if slapped, had almost stormed out of her quarters. He’d taken a breath instead, tried not to choke on the damned Klingon incense, tried to get through to her. 

_“Look, I couldn’t lose you._ Voyager _couldn’t lose you. I wasn’t going to just allow that to happen.”_

His frustration, his anger roared back as he recalled their argument. He’d resisted the urge to curl his fingers around her shoulders and give her a shake. It hadn’t been that long since she’d run all those dangerous programmes in the holodeck, since she’d hurt herself over and over again. He still carried the guilt of not noticing, not paying attention. At the time, as their relationship shifted from frantic to comfortable, he’d thought she’d simply wanted a little space, a little freedom from their constant togetherness, like he had. He’d welcomed the opportunity to have a little more time to himself to work on his Captain Proton holoprogram.

He knew better than that now. 

He’d given her space, enough that he’d started to miss her, started to be concerned (much too late), and after her activities had been discovered he’d clung to her too tightly. She’d pushed him away even harder. He’d let her because he’d been hurt and angry and afraid. Then he’d been buried under fifty kilotonnes of rock… 

And he’d known. As his life was ending, he’d realized just how much she meant to him, exactly how much he needed her. It was like a rebirth when the shuttle hatch had opened and she’d been standing there. She was the oxygen he breathed. 

_“And you stepped on the bodies of thousands of dead Bajorans to make sure I lived. My life isn’t worth more than theirs!”_

_“It is to me! I love you, B’Elanna, I couldn’t just let you die!”_

He'd never told her before. He remembered how he’d yelled at her, screamed it, his voice gruff and angry, his jaw tight, hands clenched into fists. Instead of being an affirmation, it had sounded like an accusation. 

He had meant to tell her, intended to tell her. Had planned for it with candles and flowers and a romantic dinner. But despite Harry’s coaching, he’d held back. The timing had never seemed perfect enough and, more often than not, B’Elanna had been distracted by some problem in engineering, and then time had passed. Long passed. 

She had forced him to this, she had become important to him—more important than himself—and he’d been willing to risk her anger, her disdain, to keep her alive. He should have told her long ago, should have said the words. But she’d known; she must have known. 

_If you loved me, you’d respect my choices._

And it struck him that if he ever smelled incense or smoke again, he’d be transported back to that argument, back to her anger and sense of betrayal. 

He propped his elbows on his knees and scrubbed his face, and his back and shoulders complained about the stretch. He felt like shit. His beard told him it was morning, but he didn’t feel rested, not that he expected to be after spending the night on the couch. They’d talked since then, of course, about _Voyager’s_ propulsion systems and his conn report and Neelix’ latest coffee substitute.

B’Elanna was back on duty within a few days—the miracle of modern medicine. And they had senior staff meetings to attend and lunch with Harry, overly chatty in their silence. They’d reached a peace but it wasn’t the same. By begging the captain to save her life, he’d broken her trust, broken something in their relationship, and they hadn’t quite mended it yet. 

It had been a week and he had no idea how to even try. She could be so damned unreasonable sometimes, and it wasn’t like the Captain took orders from him. He’d had no say in whether or not the Doctor used Crell Moset’s knowledge to save B’Elanna. He was just a nurse—a pilot, for God’s sake—not the chief medical officer! Who, as it turned out, had no say either.

Tom gritted his teeth and glared at the room. 

_I’m not just your fuck-toy, Tom!_

It’s not like they’d even had much sex in the last few months, not like before. Maybe this situation was just the excuse that she needed. And his sister Kathleen’s words came back to him from when she’d visited him at the rehab center in Auckland: _No situation’s so bad that you can’t make it worse._

He’d made it exponentially worse. 

Well pardon the hell outta me for wanting to save your life, he thought. “Computer, what’s the time?”

::the time is oh six hundred hours thirty seven minutes::

He needed to start moving if he wanted breakfast before his shift started. He levered himself off of the couch and crossed to his bedroom closet. At least he didn’t have to make his bed this morning. He had a half-shift in sickbay, the scene of the crime, followed by bridge duty. There wasn’t time for a water shower, so sonic would have to do. He was in and out in under three minutes. 

He shaved, cleaned his teeth, then reached for his comb and his hand hovered over B’Elanna’s hairbrush. She kept a spare in his quarters in case she stayed over. He pulled a long, dark hair from it and contemplated it for a moment, then placed it back, winding it among the bristles, securing it in place.

He pushed their argument to the back of his mind. Sickbay duty was usually easy, unless it was horrific, but the Doc frequently quizzed him then assigned him _extra reading_. Well, he’d had plenty of time to brush up on the Bolian digestive system during his empty evenings.

He straightened his collar, shot his cuffs. Pinned on his rank pips and combadge. He was already wearing his boots. A final glance in the mirror revealed dark circles under bloodshot eyes. He looked like hell but he’d have to do. He stepped to his door and it opened it reveal B’Elanna, arms behind her back, neck bent, looking at her boots. Her head jerked up and she stared at him, her eyes huge and dark. 

“B’Elanna.”

“I…” She paused, shifted slightly, brought her arms forward and curled her hands into loose fists. “You love me?”

Her voice was small, breathy and uncertain. He wasn’t sure if she’d meant it to be a statement or a question. Heat washed over him like a tide, starting at his toes and rushing up his body to his scalp, leaving it tingling. Making him feel like his hair was standing on end. He felt suddenly weak and his knees spasmed. He firmed the muscles in his legs.

“Yes.”

She nodded. Glanced away. “For how long?”

Fitzpatrick walked past in the corridor and stared at them a moment, then glanced away. They must make an odd tableau. Tom retreated a step, back into his quarters. This was not a conversation he wanted to have standing in his doorway. “Do you want…”

She nodded and followed him in, but stayed standing just outside the range of the door’s sensors. She looked like she was ready to bolt. He wanted to touch her, to feel her warmth, to make sure she was solid and whole. He wanted to take her in his arms and never let her go. 

She drew a breath, straightened her shoulders like she was preparing for battle. “When did you know that you loved me?” 

“We were in the mess hall, when—” When the Doctor had created his holographic family. When his daughter, Belle, had been injured and later died. Not the best memory for B’Elanna since she had altered the programme to make his family more like real people and less like two-dimensional, hero-worshiping stereotypes from a bad holonovel. Alterations that had resulted in Belle taking more risks… 

She had felt horrible afterward, had blamed herself. Had run through the holodeck logs, her programming, to see if she had somehow planted the algorithm that had resulted in Belle’s death. She, and the Doctor, had mourned her as if she’d been a real person because, to B’Elanna, she had represented one. And she had witnessed too much loss already.

And suddenly it was all clear to Tom. It didn’t matter that Crell Moset was just a hologram and didn’t have the knowledge of the flesh and blood Moset’s doings during the occupation of Bajor in its database. That it—he—hadn’t known. He’d _represented_ the real Moset, and that had made him real to B’Elanna. As real as Belle was. As real as the Doctor was to him.

“The mess hall?” she prompted.

“You were reading a novel.”

Her head tilted, and her eyes went round. “ _Women Warriors…_ ”

“ _At The River of Blood._ ” Tom sighed. “Rorg and M’Nea lived happily ever after.”

“You read it?” Her lips turned up in a little smile.

“I said I would,” Tom confirmed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She wasn’t talking about the Klingon romance novel anymore.

“Because I’m an idiot. Because I thought you knew.”

She smiled and took a step toward him, and he reached for her. She stepped into his embrace, her arms sliding around his middle, her face pillowing into his shoulder. Her warm breath puffed on his throat, under his jaw, as her lips rested on his skin. He clutched at her and love for her swelled inside him, constricting his throat, making it hard to breathe. 

“I’m so sorry,” he said into her hair, “I had no right to try to take that decision away from you.”

“I think… I think I was so angry, after, because I was glad that I’d lived. I hated that the captain overruled me but, deep down, I knew I didn’t want to die and without that hologram…”

Tom pulled her closer and squeezed. 

“And I had to admit that I was actually angry at myself and the captain but I took it out on you. I’m sorry, Tom.” She tilted her head and stared at him. 

“So am I.” He rested his forehead on hers, closed his eyes and just held her. And he knew that he had to tell her, had to confess to her. He took a breath and steeled himself. “Chakotay and Tuvok said using Moset’s research was unethical. I knew that. They said we shouldn’t do it but it’s different when…” Tom closed his eyes, slackened his grip on her in case she pushed him away. He didn’t want to look at her as he told her but knew had to do that, too. Her expression was curious, hesitant. 

“The Doctor said he didn’t think he could save you without it. I argued that we had to use the hologram, even knowing how you felt about it. I would have begged her if I had to.” He stiffened, waiting for her rejection. It was one thing to not support her wishes, quite another to go against them entirely. 

B’Elanna stared at him a moment, then rose up on her toes and kissed him, soft and sweet. Her mouth pulled into a little, crooked smile. “I would have done the same thing. If it had been you,” she clarified. She pulled back a little and brought her hand to his cheek, stared into his eyes. “It could have been you.”

It could have, easily. He spent a quarter of his on-duty hours in sickbay now. 

“I hated to think that I would turn my back on what I know is right because I didn’t want to lose you,” B’Elanna said. “And then I almost did.”

“Never.” Tom hugged her a little tighter. 

***

They’d shared breakfast with Harry, and he’d noticed their easing toward each other. Afterward, she rode down in the ‘lift with Tom, and before he’d exited on deck five she’d kissed him goodbye and promised to join him for lunch. She hadn’t, as it turned out. 

They’d had a private, romantic dinner in his quarters with wine and dessert and, yes, flowers: a single, long-stemmed red rose. They’d talked a little, about his shift in sickbay, uneventful as it was. He’d refrained from telling her today’s study topic: the Klingon cardiopulmonary system, the Doctor’s less than subtle hint that it was time he and B’Elanna made up. She shared her adventures with the lateral sensor array.

They’d read for a while, until she’d leaned across the couch and kissed him sweetly, then again with more heat, climbing onto his lap and digging her fingers into his hair. They’d moved to the bed, dropping clothing and kicking boots aside and he’d shown her just how much he’d missed her, how much he loved her. 

She was lying on her side and Tom had curled his long body around her, her back to his chest, her bottom tucked against his groin. One of his arms was lying heavily across her waist, his hand cupping her breast. The other arm pillowed his cheek, his fingers tangled in her hair. It wasn’t comfortable exactly, but she liked to be held this way and, after the week they’d had, he liked holding her. He would disentangle himself after she fell asleep, shift just enough to peel his skin off hers, not enough to lose his sense of her beside him. 

He tracked the rise and fall of her chest, the moment she relaxed completely and her body rolled back against his. He closed his eyes and tucked his nose into her hair. She brought her arm back and slid her palm along his thigh, and he squeezed her for a moment in response. He wanted to ask her, but… Don’t rock the boat, Tom, he thought. Don’t open the door to the possibility. But she was here, they’d made up, and he really wanted to know.

“You really didn’t know?” His volume was low, and he almost hoped she’d fallen asleep and didn’t hear him.

“Know what?”

No chance of that. “How I feel about you.”

She rolled in his arms and peered at him. “That you love me?”

“Yeah.” He’d said it. Why was it so hard to say it again? Because he hadn’t _said_ it, he’d screamed it, in anger. 

“No. I didn’t.”

He was an ass. “So, why did you stay?” She could have had anyone on the ship; he wasn’t the only guy who had asked her out. 

Her mouth twitched with a grin, and she bit her lip to contain it. Her eyes sparkled, and her voice was teasing. “Because you’re really good in bed.”

Tom’s eyes went round and a laugh exploded from him. She joined him, her body convulsing with it, her arm clenching around her belly, her fingers brushing his ribs. “Seriously,” he said.

“I am being serious.” 

She caught his hand and placed it back on her breast. His thumb brushed her nipple on reflex, and he watched it harden to a tight point. 

“You have magic hands, Tom, and you always make sure that I, well, that I come.”

His eyes jerked to her face. He was torn: part of him wanted to laugh again, and part was shocked that she might be telling the truth, that her former partner—or partners, Tom wasn’t naive enough to believe that he’d been her first, or even her second—had been so selfish or lazy that they didn’t assure her pleasure. Jealousy nibbled at him anyway and he pushed it aside, glad that he’d never have to run into any of her former lovers, lacking though they’d been. 

“I…” he faltered. “That’s what makes it good.”

“More than good,” she agreed. “I can be myself with you, Tom. I don’t have to pretend or hold back.”

She was referring to her Klingon side, the infamous Klingon sexual appetite. And suddenly he felt sorry for those guys, dumb and bumbling, and maybe too inexperienced to appreciate what they’d had in her. He moved over her, settling between her thighs and sliding down her body to nibble her throat, graze his teeth along her collarbone. “I like your self.” He raised his head and stared into her eyes. “I love you, B’Elanna.”

“I know.” She smiled and kissed him. 

*****

**Author's Note:**

> Songwriters: Leonard Cohen  
> Anthem lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC  
> From the album, The Future (1992)


End file.
